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Topic: Do you only play your own drums? (Read 2372 times)

I am just wondering if its the same for everyone else.I am terrible at adapting to other people's kits on kit share gigs. Played fusion toms last night. Sticks were rebounding through the roof and heading into space? I feel like I can only play my kit! Anyone share this?

Hey don't worry with this, it only means you are especially sensitive ...

I don't know about drumkits a lot, but it's same with hand drums too. It takes me about half an hour to come close with a new setup.A new location - other acoustics; a drum of someone, I feel new skin textures with my fingers, it's strange - another tension, weight, all vibes are different ... it may be horrible.

But actually, I've got much new experience playing different drums, so I think it's good indeed.

I think all of us are most comfortable playing our own kits, set up the way we prefer. However, I also think it's important to be adaptable so that you can jump on a foreign kit and still be able to play effectively.

When I first started playing on shared kits, I was very uncomfortable. As I got more experience, it became much less of an issue. Since then only once did I encounter a significant problem. I was asked to play a set on a gig. The drummer's kit was in horrible condition, poorly tuned, ergonomically a disaster, and the bass drum pedal spring so stretched that the only way to get the beater to the head was to lift my entire leg and stomp on the foot plate. Even then, it barely hit the head with any force. You just have to adjust.

I play kit drums too and there's nothing worse than sitting down to play an unfamiliar kit, only to find that some of the drums are out of tune, the cymbals are horrid and the bass drum pedal flat and lifeless. I am very uncomfortable playing other people's kits...when i set up my own kit everything has to be 'just so'...

As for hand drums, the only drums other than my own i've played have all been in music shops. In those instances, the skins are usually so loose and untuned that they are unplayable. Cajons seem to be the only percussion instruments worth playing in those instances.

I can adapt pretty readily to another drum kit, but I found out recently that my band mates cannot...they get used to hearing the sound of my drums/snare/toms/cymbals and it does throw them off when they don't hear what they have become accustomed to hearing. I had never thought of that until I played a gig this past week using a house kit, and no one could hear what I was doing back there. The tuning and projection were just miserable.

Do I recommend the Max Method? Perhaps. It sure would make you pretty solid by the time you finally sat down at a drumset. Is that what I did? Nope. I may not have a band named after me, but I do okay. My point is, there are many ways to go about learning to play the drums, and they all involve getting a pair of sticks into your hands, and listening to music.

I have to say, I wish I had paid more attention to all that book learning in the beginning, but hey, within a year of starting to play, I had formed a band with two friends, and we were playing our favorite songs together regularly. We weren't all that good as a band, I admit, but I feel that it was the right way to learn for me. As in: Just get behind some drums and DO IT.